


Some New Kind Of Spirits

by Squash (JeSuisGourde)



Series: Home Brew [4]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M, Vague Slow Burn, friendly debating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 10:21:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21196085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeSuisGourde/pseuds/Squash
Summary: Grantaire goes over to Enjolras' apartment to help paint signs. They have a debate that ends up friendlier than expected, and Grantaire wonders if maybe Enjolras is starting to actually like him as a person. Or something. Maybe.





	Some New Kind Of Spirits

**Author's Note:**

> Uhh I haven't updated this series in six years. Here's a surprise new chapter? Technically I was working on a new chapter of History Of Melancholia but I got an inspiration for this series too.

Enjolras' apartment is one half of a duplex, cosy and lived-in, with a kitchen nook and bright, wide living room windows that Grantaire takes a moment to stop and appreciate despite the fast-approaching darkness. Enjolras drops his backpack on the sofa and gestures generally at the living room floor.

“I'll go grab the paints and poster board. We can work out here. Will you shove the coffee table over there? Just push it up against the chair, is fine.”

Grantaire does as he's told, moving the coffee table as carefully as he can until it bumps gently against the armchair. Then he stands rather helplessly in the middle of the floor, feeling a little too awkward to sit down, and not nearly adventurous enough to look around. Enjolras emerges from what Grantaire assumes is the bedroom, a box full of paints and brushes under one arm and a number of posterboards under the other. He drops them onto the coffee table with a somewhat awkward clatter.

“So, the protest this weekend is mostly to do with laws in place that affect the homeless, and more specifically against the two propositions on the upcoming ballot that will affect the city.” Enjolras kneels on the floor, setting the posterboard in front of him. Grantaire kneels down, shuffling until he can peer over Enjolras' shoulder. “So I'm thinking of a sign each for both specific props, then one more generic, and maybe one in Spanish as well. Bahorel suggested that, I think it's a good idea.”

Grantaire slides one posterboard towards him with his index and middle fingers, gesturing for a pencil as Enjolras talks. He flips the pencil round and round his hand and looks down at the blank space.

“What do you want them to say? They're trying to make it illegal to hand out food to the homeless— I could write something about a right to eat? Or, I dunno, 'Sharing Is Caring,' some touchy-feely shit like that.”

“Don't write that, it's sounds flip. I like 'Food is a human right' or something similar,” Enjolras nods at him, his face aglow with that serious passion Grantaire sees so often from his place at the bar. “Your first idea was a good one. What about the other poster? The one for the sit-lie measure?”

Grantaire bites his tongue and swallows back the skeptical eye-roll and criticism that are his instinctual reaction. He said he would help, and Enjolras is actually being _nice_ to him. He doesn't want to ruin either of those things. “We could just say 'Sitting is a human right', too. You could just make a big sign listing all the rights we've lost.”

Enjolras rolls his eyes, ignoring the jab of sarcasm. “No, that'll get boring fast. How about 'Everyone deserves rest'? Or 'Sidewalks are for all people'? Or you could say both, one on each side of the sign.”

“That works. Got a ruler? Thanks.” Grantaire leans over the sign, sketching the words lightly across the expanse of white. “Maybe we should text Bahorel, ask him what the Spanish sign should say. What are you gonna do while I'm making your world-saving masterpieces, fearless leader?”

“Type up this flyer Combeferre and I came up with. I gotta make a layout and edit it down so it actually fits and is, like, something people will want to read. I'll text Bahorel now, too. And don't call me that.”

“No promises.”

Enjolras moves to the couch, settling himself down with his laptop on his knees and papers taking up the rest of the cushions. They work in silence for a while, as Grantaire sketches out the signs and then starts to go over the lettering with a first coat of paint. Time passes quickly as they both become absorbed in their work. Grantaire only realizes he's been humming quietly to himself for at least the past ten minutes when Enjolras puts his laptop down and stands.

“Do you want something to drink? Or eat, even? I was going to make myself some tea. I also have coffee, if you want. Or soda.” Enjolras shrugs, stepping gingerly over the posters to make his way towards the kitchen. “And I can, I dunno, order pizza or something?”

Grantaire glances over his shoulder to watch him putter around the little tiled kitchen area. “Coffee's good. And food's up to you. It's your house. I'll eat or not-eat anything.”

“Pizza, then.”

“Goes so well with tea.”

Enjolras scoffs out a laugh. “Shut up, it's fine. I need tea to help me think. Flavor profile be damned. And coffee's not much better.”

“Excuse you, I intend to slam whatever caffeine you have like I'm shotgunning a beer, and it'll be gone way before the pizza gets here.”

“You're disgusting.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“For that, you make your own coffee. Machine's there, grounds are there.”

Grantaire smirks and heaves himself upright, joining Enjolras in the kitchen and making himself the strongest black coffee he can. Enjolras wrinkles his nose. But Grantaire is right; he has made and drunk his coffee long before the pizza gets there.

The pizza box is deposited on the coffee table, and they take a break from working to get through at least a quarter of it before starting up again. Grantaire wipes the grease off on the thighs of his jeans. Enjolras raises one eyebrow and looks pointedly at the roll of paper towels standing beside the pizza box. Grantaire just smirks and goes back to painting a second coat. Enjolras shakes his head and turns his attention to the laptop again.

“Did you go to art school?” Enjolras' question makes Grantaire jump; he'd gotten used to the comfortable silence broken only by the clicking of a keyboard.

“Uh. Yes. Well, no. Not really.” He shrugs one shoulder and pretends to focus particularly hard on making a straight line. “I went to college for art for a year. But, I dropped out. Long story.”

“Oh. Uh, sorry. Ah.” Enjolras looks _awkward_, which is just not an expression that becomes him _at all_. He huffs a small, frustrated-sounding laugh. “It's hard to make conversation when I don't know anything about you at all. You talk about classics a lot.”

“Was gonna be my minor.”

“Oh. And movies, and books.”

“You watch a lot of TV working at a bar. And I like reading.” Grantaire shrugs. He's been doing that a lot lately, but he realizes that most of his life can be summarized in a shrug, so maybe it makes sense. “Hey, I'm an open— Okay well, I'm not an open book, really, but you can just ask. Stilted and awkward looks like shit on you.”

“I'm trying to figure out what angle to come at this from. And thanks, asshole.”

Grantaire laughs. “I mean, I don't know anything about you, either. I don't even know what you're majoring in at school. Political science, I assume?”

“Kind of. I'm doing an independent major, which just means I kind of get to make up my own major. I have to prove that every class I take is pertinent to my overall major and not just random shit.” Again Grantaire can't help but notice the passion that lights Enjolras' eyes. It's captivating, compelling. “I'm calling it critical justice theory, so yeah, a lot of political science classes, and history, and philosophy, and ethnic studies, stuff like that.”

“Damn, that's badass.” He scoffs a laugh. “And I couldn't even make it through slacker school.”

“It's easier than trying to make an already-made major fit what I want.” Enjolras shrugs, lowering the screen of his laptop to look at Grantaire's work. “Are you putting pictures on there too?”

Grantaire pauses his sketch, sitting back on his heels. “Yeah. I figured it's better to have a sign with some pictures on it, too. Something to catch the eye that isn't just words, y'know?”

“No, I like it. Good idea. What did you do before you started working at the Musain? Since you weren't in school.”

“Well, I practically lived in the library after I moved here.” Grantaire keeps his eyes on his work, feeling strange and inadequate after learning about Enjolras' university ambitions. “I just spent all my free time reading, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I still don't know, but I got a job at the Musain from reading all the books on bartending in the library, so that worked. Before that I taught jiu jitsiu to kids, but the building flooded and my boss couldn't afford to move the business anywhere else so he just stopped.”

“I didn't know you did martial arts.” And he sounds genuinely interested. It jars Grantaire into a moment of openness, some place he imagines he could tell someone everything and have them still like them.

“Used to. Jiu jitsu, capoeira, a little krav maga. Not anymore. I used to dance, too. And before I moved here I would DJ and run karaoke nights at a bar back home. And I was a shitty fry-cook there at a shitty diner I'd never go back to even if my life depended on it. And I used to do art. I used to do a lot of things.”

“But not anymore.” It's not phrased like a question.

“No, not anymore. Now I'm just a bartender.” Grantaire feels his shoulders slowly rising up towards his ears. Nervously, he jumps up and starts perusing Enjolras' books all neatly arranged on the white ikea shelves that line the wall. “Jesus, of course you'd have nothing but theory on your bookshelves. You're no fun. There's not even a comic book or a novel or anything here!”

“Oh, uh. No. My fiction's in my bedroom.” Enjolras laughs a little, just a huff of air through his nose. “Combeferre and I share this shelf. I'm not that much of a tightass.”

“Could've fooled me. Oh, I've read this one.”

“Which?”

“Byung-Chul Han, _The Burnout Society_.” Grantaire pulls it off the shelf and waves it in the air. “Read it in the library when I was, y'know, basically living there. It's interesting, I guess. But he's just kind of pointing out things we all already know.”

Enjolras cocks his head to the side, considering. “Sure, but the important part is that he's pointing them out. That's what critical theory and activism are for, R.”

“And does anything come from stating the obvious?” He finds himself leaning casually against the back of the armchair the way he would lean casually against the bar. “Not usually, so why bother?”

“Because the more people who get things pointed out to them, the more they become aware and enraged.” Enjolras runs a hand through his hair and then gestures between them, impassioned light in his eyes. “Just because you and I think this stuff is obvious doesn't mean everyone does. Or if they do know it's happening, they don't necessarily know why they should care. This kind of literature, or activism, or whatever, helps tell them how it affects them and _why_ they should care.”

“And if it doesn't affect them, like these new measures you care so much about?”

“Then it reminds them that there are other human beings in the world and they should care about people in general, especially people in less privileged positions.”

Grantaire snorts out a laugh. “Enjolras, you are amazing.”

Enjolras blinks at him. “I don't know whether to say thank you or be insulted. Or both.”

“You just have such blind faith in people. And you don't think about who can or can't do what.”

“What does that even mean?”

Grantaire waves the thin paperback in the air between them again. “This book, for example. What was your takeaway?”

“That we need to start calling for shorter work hours, more time for rest,” Enjolras ticks each point off with a flat, open-handed gesture. “That people should be encouraged to slow down and contemplate their position, their life. That we don't need to be saying 'yes' to everything all the time, or looking at media and thinking about work all the time. That if we all go at the pace we're going, the world is going to, as the title says, burn out and people are going to start losing their humanity. So we need to find time to rest, to be tired in a _good_ way, instead of exhausted by capitalism.”

“That's all well and good, Enjolras, but what about people who can't afford to do that? People who are working multiple jobs because otherwise they can't afford to pay rent and feed themselves at the same time? People who can't afford to slow down because otherwise they'll be fired, like those poor cunts who work at Amazon?” He wishes he could sound forceful, or annoyed, but for some reason the sight of Enjolras curled up on the couch only brings out an insistent gentleness in him. He keeps pushing, even though he knows he sounds weary and soft instead of pissed off. “What about the homeless you seem to care so much about, who don't even have a place to go back and relax to? They can't even sit on the street without being harassed by a cop or treated like dirt by random people walking by.”

“Well, that's why we're protesting. So they can be treated like people. So they'll still _be_ allowed to sit on the sidewalk.”

Grantaire rolls his eyes. “You know what protesting does? It makes people who already care feel good about themselves for showing it, but it doesn't actually get anything done.”

“No, that's what _peaceful _protesting does.” Enjolras's fingers close into a fist as he gestures in the air before him, expression bright and forged in iron. “But direct action, direct confrontation with police and with counter-protestors, interruption of daily life like transportation or major thoroughfares, that gets people's attention. That makes it hard to ignore.”

“I mean, sure, I guess.” Another shrug. His signature fucking move tonight. “But it's your fucking funeral if you get hit in the head or whatever, and I sure ain't going to it. Most of us can't afford to be arrested. Hell, most of us can't even afford to take the day off.”

“Which is why we get people who_ can_ afford it to go out and protest, to speak up for those who can't, or who can't afford it, or won't be listened to. Direct action isn't just for those who are directly affected, it's for anyone.”

“Well, I'll make your signs, but don't expect anything more than that. I sit firmly in both camps of 'can't afford to go out there' and 'don't see the point anyway.'”

Enjolras looks confused, put out. “I thought you said you agreed with me.”

“I do. I agree that there's a problem and that it's shitty and that it shouldn't be happening. I agree that people should be able to have time to themselves and shouldn't have to get burnt out or whatever. I just don't see the point in protesting when nothing is ever going to change.” It's nice that Enjolras believes in all his causes, but he wishes there was some way to get him and all his student followers to realize that what they're trying to do is probably futile and that they'll all be disappointed. “We're all stuck in this bullshit, and the people can actually make decisions that change things aren't going to want this to change because it's good for them. The people this really affects can't afford to do anything about it. So, you know, it's never going to change, no matter what you do. But I guess it's nice to see someone who cares so much or whatever. So good luck.”

“Well, at least I have your approval.” He's shaking his head, turning back to the laptop. Grantaire laughs.

“Be glad. Most people don't even get that.”

“It would be better if we had your body.”

Grantaire feels his face heat up and hopes to whatever's out there that he hasn't actually turned red. “Um.”

“For the protest, dumbass. Come on, not everyone's minds are that dirty.”

And suddenly the tension in the room seeps away as quickly as it had come, and Grantaire finds himself smirking and throwing a leering grin at Enjolras.

“Hm. Just ask Courfeyrac or Bossuet. I think it's your mind that isn't dirty enough.” Grantaire ignores the massive eyeroll sent in his direction and kneels down in front of the signs again. “Do you want to put like a website or something on the bottom, or just leave it like this? I can do that if you want and then paint one more coat on the pictures and I think we'll be good. I can do the Spanish one tonight, too.”

“Sure. Sounds good to me.”

They work again in companionable silence, only breaking it to discuss the spacing of the words on the Spanish language sign. It's a surprise they're not arguing more, that Enjolras hasn't thrown him out yet. But Grantaire isn't going to push his luck. So he stays quiet, and watches Enjolras out of the corner of his eye as the man types tirelessly on his laptop, bottom lip trapped between his teeth in concentration.

When he gets back inside after a smoke break, Enjolras has changed position from his curled-up state to something closer to lounging, and Grantaire has to remind himself not to stare. He tosses his jacket down and throws himself back into painting just so he'll be too distracted to keep looking up at the vision before him. Enjolras doesn't even seem to notice the internal struggle going on before him, stretched languidly across the sofa with his laptop on his lap and one knee up, typing away at whatever paper or pamphlet or agenda he has open.

Grantaire forces himself to be a decent friend or whatever and just work on the signs inside of daydreaming. He can daydream at work when it's slow and he's got nothing to do but watch Enjolras move about the room like a beam of sunlight made human.

“That's it. I think they're done.” Grantaire drops his brush in the glass of murky paint water and pretends not to be watching expectantly as Enjolras moves to stand beside him and stare down at the signs, maybe critiquing them, maybe admiring, he can't tell.

“This is good work, Grantaire. None of us could have made signs this nice.”

Grantaire shrugs, reaching for his leather jacket that's crumpled on the floor beside him. “Speaking of work, I should go. It's past one, and I have work tomorrow.”

Enjolras watches him stand and move toward the door. “Want a ride home?”

“Oh, no, it's okay.” Grantaire flaps one hand in Enjolras' general direction. “You're already home and stuff. I'll just take the bus.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, it's fine. I like public transport.” He shrugs, jamming his beanie onto his head. “People-watching, and interesting shit usually happens at night. You're good. So, uh, I'll see around, I guess?”

“Yeah, see you. Thanks for the signs, they look really good.”

“It's nothing. Bye, fearless leader.”

“Don't call me that,” Enjolras rolls his eyes, but he's smiling a little. “See you later.”

Grantaire rides the bus back, punching in the door code with blind accuracy and easily finding his way in the dark. He flips on the little light by his bed and grabs a beer, listening to the musical tinkle as it clinks against the others around it. In the warm yellow light, he pulls out his water-stained secondhand copy of _ Dead Souls. _He reads for a while, but his thoughts keep drifting back to Enjolras, and Enjolras' apartment, and Enjolras' smile, and their awkward but easy conversation.

It feels good to think about. A weird, butterfly feeling in his stomach that's nothing like nausea but just as worrying, in some way. He goes to run his fingers through his hair, only to be stopped short by globs of acrylic paint. Must've brushed his hair back without noticing his dirty hands. He'll get up early tomorrow and go wash the paint out before work. But for now, he's content to read, and he's even okay with letting his thoughts wander. For now, he's okay with thoughts of Enjolras and paint and debates and passionate eyes and that little, pleasant smile that graced Enjolras' face for most of the night. For now he's okay with imagining that smile was for him.

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all should read The Burnout Society. It's a fast read, just over 50 pages, and really good.


End file.
